Posts Tagged ‘Richard Shavzin’

We had a great opening weekend for MIRACLES IN THE FALL. What fun to see all of you who joined us for the celebration! And now the first reviews are rolling in. There will be more to come, but here are highlights from the first reviews and photos from the production. If you haven’t seen the show yet, please join us soon!

“there are able performances all around.”-Time Out Chicago

Chuck O’Connor’s new drama about a torn Catholic family struggling to make amends takes a page from the familiar Eugene O’Neill playbook of dysfunction and disillusionment around the dinner table. You’ve got your hardened Irish blue-collar father, long given up on forgiving his late wife for an unnamed sin; your prodigal son, fallen from grace and trying to turn back the clock and win dad’s acceptance; and most aptly, a liquor cabinet full of whiskey to drown a generation’s worth of sorrows and secrets before setting them all aflame.

–Time Out Chicago

“By the time we get to the titular fall, O’Connor’s real statement comes to light, and it’s a moving one. ” -Time Out Chicago

O’Connor’s story of alcoholism, self-destruction and self-preservation, faith and family secrets, all set against the backdrop of a world turning itself upside down, is familiar. Nonetheless, the characters are compelling, and the world being what it is, it’s a story that certainly bears telling and retelling.

O’Connor developed the work in 2013 as part of PET’s festival of new plays. The setting is Detroit in 1968, a year out from the city’s Twelfth Street Riots, and for the Connelly family, a year out from the death of a mother and wife who commanded a complicated, painful blend of love, hate, respect and contempt from her husband, Jimmy, and her children, Clare and Charlie.

Clare, who entered the convent — at her mother’s insistence — at age thirteen, struggles with her own embrace of post-Vatican II, social justice-focused theology and the attraction of submission to a simpler call to obedience and duty. As she grapples with anger at her father’s alcoholism and his attacks on both aspects of her faith, her estranged brother returns home, post-Vietnam, looking for reconciliation with their father.

“Laura Berner Taylor (Clare) and Rian Jairell (Father Lentine) open the play with a particularly well-executed scene “-Edge Chicago

Clare’s life is further complicated by the departure of the authoritarian Monsignor who hands down penance and “charges” her with caring for her father, and his replacement by Father Lentine, a young priest whose uncertainties about faith and duty and meaning run parallel to her own.

Both the intimate setting of the Connellys’ living room and the backdrop of a still-smoldering Detroit, cautiously rallying around the “miracle” of the American League Champion Detroit Tigers, remain painfully resonant, as Ferguson, Missouri, fades from national attention and rare positive press for Chicago’s South Side in the wake of Jackie Robinson West’s ascension to Little League World Series glory gives way, once again to crime statistics….

It is to the playwright’s credit and the company’s that the work is likely to stand up to time and repeat viewings.

“All four actors are talented and the performances are very good overall”-Edge Chicago

Charles C. Palia, Jr.’s scenic design is excellent for the space and for the piece. With almost no set redressing, the action moves from living room to classroom to a prayer sanctuary nestled in the corner of a graveyard. In conjunction with Benjamin L. White’s lighting and Aaron Stephenson’s sound design, the spatial logic of scenes is always clear, maintaining the important distinction between private and public life as well as that between individual conscience and societal responsibility.

–EDGE Chicago

The story focuses on the eldest daughter of the family, Clare Connelly. Clare is a nun, but not in the sweet Sally Field style, but rather more like an angry, lost character that could have escaped right out of Edward Albee’s, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Laura Berner Taylor throws herself entirely into bringing Clare to life. She completely commands every scene she’s in and gives a powerhouse performance…The more we learn about Clare and the more Berner Taylor has to draw on the more riveting she becomes.

[Fred A.] Wellicsh really sinks his teeth into playing his character’s alcoholism and Parkinson’s, both difficult tasks for sure…his outbursts are theatrical and played to perfection….

Rian Jairell (Fr. Lentine) and Mickey O’Sullivan (Charlie Connely) both bring as much to their roles as possible early in the proceedings and truly shine later as their characters become more developed….

Charles C. Palia’s set worked nicely in a small space considering the number of locations that were needed…Benjamin L. White’s lighting design and Jessica Smith’s Costumes and Props were spot on and added to the feel of the piece and the period.

–Chicago Stage Standard

It’s hard to imagine a richer setting for an American problem play than the home of a working-class Irish-American family in Detroit in the autumn of 1968—all those complicated Irish-Catholic personal problems (alcoholism, sexual repression, hair-trigger tempers, free-floating anger) and heady issues of the day (race riots, Vatican II, Vietnam, intergenerational strife, not to mention the 1968 World Series) almost literally at the doorstep….

–Chicago Reader

“The angst and noise that’s generated in the first act is performed with fearless commitment and energy by the cast under Richard Shavzin’s direction” -Chicago Theatre Beat

O’Connor has a good ear for dialogue, though, and Aaron Stephenson’s sound design incorporating audio of Tigers’ broadcasts and jingles provides a sense of period authenticity. There’s something appealing about a play that brings the traditions of Irish family drama to a Midwestern setting and an era many in the audience will remember.

Polarity Ensemble Theatre continues to have a swirl of new work activity as we head into summer. We are delighted to announce the winner of this year’s Dionysos Cup Festival of New Plays: Chuck O’Connor’s Miracles in the Fall. The workshop reading was directed by Josh Sobel. The dramaturg was Michael Manocchio. The cast featured Robyn Coffin, Nick Freed, Craig Cunningham and Fred Wellisch.

This year’s festival had a tremendously strong slate of plays. The Dionysos Cup Festival is Polarity’s signature play development process that includes a full six month cycle of script development for Chicago-area playwrights. To date, we have hosted six Dionysos Cup Festivals. Seven Dionysos Cup scripts have gone on to full productions. Thanks also to Stage Manager Walker Jones, Business Manager Sam Stelmack and Artistic Director Richard Engling.
We Win a Jeff Award!

Jeff Award Winner Lindsey Pearlman

And speaking of Dionysos Cup plays, we were elated when Lindsey Pearlman won the Jeff Award for “Actress in a Principal Role in a Play” for playing Maria in the Dionysos-Cup-developed world premiere of Bill Jepsen’s Never the Bridesmaid. Bill was also nominated for Best New Work. It was well-deserved recognition for a play that was a huge hit with our audience. Never the Bridesmaid was the best-selling play in Polarity’s nine year history.

The entire cast of seven gave stand-out performances, with Nick Lake, Catherine Hermes, Brian Plocharczyk, Kristin Danko, Steve Pringle and Daria Harper rounding out the cast. But what perhaps makes us even more proud is the development of the script over the six month process in the 2011 Dionysos Cup, aided by director Mary Ellen O’Hara with dramaturg (and Polarity company member) Kim Boler, followed by another six months of development aided by production director Richard Shavzin. When we talked with audience members about their favorite parts of the show, many of those were new material Bill had written while working with Polarity in the festival and especially in the lead up to the production. The team of Richard Shavzin and Bill Jepsen was amazing.

Movie Magic

And in further new work news, Polarity company member Darren Callahan is writing, directing and producing a new movie based on a play that had some development at Polarity, and you can get in on the action. Set in Hollywood in 1968, Desperate Dolls is the story of three beautiful women caught in a mystery of murder, ghosts, and hypnosis. The film will star Alyssa Thordarson, Stephanie Leigh Rose, Emily Bennett, G. Riley Mills, and Stephen Spencer. Produced by Darren Callahan and Stephanie Leigh Rose with John Klein, the film is a production from a new company, Doll Films, and has a preliminary budget under $100,000. Also contributing are production designer Ashley Ann Woods (a frequent designer with Polarity), cinematographer J. Van Auken, and editor Mike Molenda. Principal photography is a fourteen-day production in August 2013, filmed on location in Chicago, Illinois and Los Angeles, California.

With Desperate Dolls, Darren Callahan (BBC, SyFy Channel, NPR, others) intends to deliver to his growing cult of horror fans a film that is frightening, original, and stylish. Having written several thriller novels and released nearly 50 recordings on various punk, pop, and ambient labels, Callahan’s impact on horror has had a remarkable six-year run, starting with 2007’s Horror Academy, the critically acclaimed Chicago stage production. He is also featured in the popular film companion book Horror 101. With a regular column on horror in San Francisco’s Omni(bucket) Magazine, and his Roger Corman-style film, Children of the Invisible Man, Callahan continues to create thought-provoking and entertaining work within the genre.